The BodyCartography Project and Performance Space 122 present
Holiday House at Coil Festival
Jan 9th 7pm + Jan 10th 10:30pm + Jan 12th 10pm + Jan 13th 3:30pm

On holiday the normal sequence of time unravels, regular activities, chores and spatial awareness of ordinary places are deconstructed or completely altered, perception bends. Reality shifts. Stuck at home, on holiday, an adventure unfolds pitching the performers all over the stage, under furniture, over each other and tilting precariously from bicycles. A mash up of home as creation of intentional family, experiences with your “actual” family, the families you saw on television, and the home videos that form your memories. Holiday House alloys the most theatrical elements of video and the most filmic elements of dance, pushing that amalgam through the pressurized lens of the theater to create a sparkling composite.


Holiday House from Olive Bieringa on Vimeo.

Critical Correspondence interview with Justin Jones

"The pleasure of viewing is so intense here, so fun as to be nearly guilty...what you see is at once brilliantly planned - lighting, angles, perspectives clear as cinema - and breakneck. The movement feels dangerously unhinged."
Lightsey Darst, , BodyCartography's Holiday House #2, 09/19/07, mspmag.com

“These performers could just as easily run rampant through your house, upending your best-laid plans, haunting your dreams… With sly wit and subtle socio-political commentary, the BodyCartography Project revealed the teeming chaos within the shadows of even the happiest home.”
Caroline Palmer, Artist of the Year, City Pages, January 2nd 2008

"Hoilday House," however, is in a class by itself as the sort of gift that comes not once a year but rarely”
Robb Nelson, Twisting the night away: Welcome to "Holiday House" 01/04/08 www.minnpost.com

The BodyCartography Project was founded in 1998 and is co-directed by dance and video artists Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. Their work investigates the physical resonance of space in urban, wild, domestic and social landscapes through dance, video and installation work internationally. They engage and provoke audiences in diverse contexts with work created with independent artists and scientists on a project basis. Their work has been presented in Minneapolis, San Francisco, NYC, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, Russia and South America.

Holiday House was honored with a 2008 SAGE Award for Outstanding Performance and a 2006 SAGE People’s Choice Award. They were named Sustainable Art Fellows by St Paul Public Art 2008-9, and Artists of the Year 2007 by Minneapolis City Pages. Their recent commissions include Station/Stationary for Cheshire Dance and Crewe Station, UK in 2008, which featured on the BBC and the Walker Art Center’s Momentum series in 2006.

Originally commissioned by the Walker Art Center for the Momentum Series with additional support from the Jerome Foundation, the Archibald Bush Foundation, and Forecast Public Artworks.